SL Mining Concession Landowners, across the eighteen villages in the Marampa Chiefdom, have called on the management of SL Mining to sack Mrs. Olga Moigbeh, the wife of the Inspector General of Police, who also doubles as the resident Country Director for SL Mining Company in Sierra Leone.
In a letter dated 22nd October, 2018, authored by the Secretary General of the Concession Landowners on behalf of the eighteen villages in the Marampa Chiefdom, the landowners have passed a vote of non-confidence over both the leadership of Mrs. Moigbeh and the entire Community Relations Team at SL Mining and want the Company to remove them from their entire operations.
The letter further urged the management of SL Mining to immediately convene a meeting with the landowners to discuss the details of their grievances against the company.
The Secretary General has, in an exclusive interview with the press, noted that Mrs. Moigbeh has reneged on her earlier promise to ensure that she utilized the Local Content Policy of Sierra Leone for the recruitment and appointment of key staff members at the company and other related matters.
Mr. Shekah Muntah Kamara has continued that Mrs. Moigbeh connived with the Community Relations Team in the Company to bring in people from Freetown to take up jobs that Lunsar and Marampa indigenes can effectively do, citing a series of examples on the recruitment of HR Manager, Finance and Procurement Officers, to name a few.
He praised the management of SL Mining for clearly respecting their rights, which, he noted, has led to the creation of the Community Relations Department, bestowing them with the responsibility of liaising between the community and the company.
The landowners, he went on, are disappointed that the Community Relations Team had connived with Mrs. Moigbeh to deprive the people of Lunsar and Marampa of what is due them as community people affected by the operations of SL Mining.
Other youths, who spoke to the press, have noted that their Paramount Chief, PC Koblo Queen of Marampa Chiefdom, who had earlier stood with the youths and the landowners around the number of issues they have continued to raise against the company, has recently took sides with the company by disbanding the legally constituted Concessional Landowners Committee for the fact that they had called for the sacking of Mrs. Moigbeh and the entire Community Relations Team.
They told this press that what hasinflamed the whole situation is the current arbitrary arrest and illegal detentions being carried out by the Chief Superintendent of Police, Manfred Williams, and Local Unit Commander of the Lunsar Police Division.
LUC Williams has carried out a number of arrests of youths, including the Secretary General of the Concession Landowners on the instructions of Mrs. Moigbeh. They are normally arrested when the youths or the landowners meet to discuss burning issues pertaining to the operations of SL Mining in the area.
The Secretary General of the Concession Landowners in Lunsar has said that LUC Williams takes strict orders from Mrs. Moigbeh to intimidate and suppress the landowners instead of engaging them in a fruitful dialogue to resolve whatever grievances they might have with the company.
Lunsar and Marampa Chiefdom are definitely now on a time bomb, as all these stakeholders in the Chiefdom, including the Police and the Paramount Chief of Lunsar, have failed to use dialogue to resolve the pending crisis between the concession landowners and the SL Mining Company.
The crisis have continued to deepen as youths, who have been virtually deprived of gathering by the Local Unit Commander to discuss their burning issues, are now bent on using whatever means available to them to vent out their anger for the attention of Government.